I APOLOGIZE FOR LENGTH I RAMBLE ALOT.
"if I had more time I would write fewer words"
This was such a delight, Seriously amazing entry.
I didn't jam this time so I cant rate but I can tell you my thoughts.
Note take any negative with a "Considering you made this in a jam It makes 100% sense to not have had the energy, time, or desire to do these. Just thoughts for the future"
Presentation
The graphics are very simple, but this actually plays to the games strengths, it keeps the game is visually clear and you can easily understand the board state at any time.
Things are color coordinated but not in a out of context way. Enemies are pollution and they are a dark muddy color, not just red. Their is lots of Greens and pinks for the nature but each element has a different spread of color too, green grass, pink flowers, bush with a mix of green and pink, brown and green trees, etc. It makes the game visually interesting.
All of this visual clarity also made learning the game alot faster since I didn't read the tutorial.
The visual clarity and theming art strong and great, but I would lower the score a bit off of visual polish. Lots of little things that could have been improved. The font for score and on the enemy timer feels a bit out of place and unappealing.
Pollution enemies when flying onto the map feels a tame, not bad, but a trail, and maybe some squash on the land would help, additionally during this animation the blobs will layer under your plants. A small effect that probably would have added alot imo is to have the merged elements fly into the final element rather then just disappearing.
A polish element that might have helped clarity would be to have the pollution timer be alot more intrusive, have the letter scale and maybe pulsate and flash when the timer is on 1 could help.
TLDR: Presentation is Clear, Pleasant, and does its job super well. But it does lack polish in some areas.
Enjoyment
Would be an easy 5/5. The gameplay is simple, but there is alot of depth.
First off the inclusion of an end goal for a jam game is fantastic move imo. It gives players something to strive for, I spent a good hour+ in the game aiming for that end goal. I left satisfied and wanting to play more and I imagine the people who won left satisfied as hell. The general Jam thought is to just make games score based, which imo usually results in people leaving when bored a bad last impression.
So the gameplay itself is great, you need to balance alot of little things, always make sure you have space to finish your merges, to do this you need to place carefully and clear out enemies. Then enemy killing added a great use to finishing merges that you otherwise wouldn't.
Speaking of enemy killing, a criticism I had at first was the lack of reward for finishing merges with 3+ items. I kinda ended up loving this actually, for 2 reasons: You need to make placements in a way that you avoid 4s generally it takes up more space, this felt more strategic and added a layer to my considerations. Secondly, bigger merges = more enemies your likely to hit.
Game was addicting as hell, very fun to try and beat. Just had a blast.
I again apologize for the Essay, its alot, but am rushing cause I played and rated this on my work shift hehe, kinda rolled my eyes a bit when I saw a merge game ngl, play enough of those for work, but this one really was a blast.
Seriously amazing work.